ALDI Laptops

machalla · 19-02-2004 02:56PM

I bought a Lidl laptop about 18 months ago now. Powersupply (that plugs into the laptop) died after about 6 months or so. The whole laptop had to be sent back to Germany for checking out and then they sent it back wth new powersupply.

While it was kind of annoying to have to send it all back I will say that they did a fairly prompt job (2 weeks there and back) overall and came out to collect the machine from one address and dropped it back my work address.

I wouldn't have too many qualms about buying from Lidl again (although perhaps Aldi is different?). Targa were pretty ok to deal with overall too.

Standard Toaster · 20-02-2004 11:12AM

Hmmmmm.....defo interested in getting this laptop.
Would I be better off trying the Coolock Adli instead of the one on Parnell Street or is it all the same?

paulj13 · 20-02-2004 12:04PM

I generally find that as everyone thinks that the Coolock store will be a better option so they all generally flood there for offers like this. However, my experience is that the Parnell store is less convenient for local shoppers (it in town and does not suffer for the local resident syndrome that Coolock can) and can mean that you can get stuff much more easily if you set yourself up there. In saying that Aldi seems to be doing the fill in docket until the 6th of March. So just stay in bed, read the reviews of the machine here for a week and then based on the result choose to go into Aldi and fill in a docket on the 4th and wait for them to ring with your new machine (also gives you the time to get the money together).

Don’t let the bargain bug rule you ;-D

Standard Toaster · 20-02-2004 01:52PM

Right so

In saying that Aldi seems to be doing the fill in docket until the 6th of March. So just stay in bed, read the reviews of the machine here for a week and then based on the result choose to go into Aldi and fill in a docket on the 4th and wait for them to ring with your new machine (also gives you the time to get the money together).

I've never shopped in Aldi before so forgive me if I sound like a sausage but I assumed it would be a bit like Lidl and their laptops which poor feckers had to queue early in a first-come first-serve kinda way. Sweet if I can get the docket sorted instead. Cheers.

The_Conductor · 20-02-2004 02:46PM

Have had two Gericom laptops in the past.
Decent enough machines- but I should say that they eat batteries.
The processors in them are the desktop processors- they run hotter than a hen on a hot gridle.
Nice quirk if you're upgrading the RAM- the keyboard pops out- the RAM is under the keyboard.

Gericom manufactured all the "Advent" laptops we are used to around here.

Shane

Placebo · 20-02-2004 02:58PM

so basically the advent will be the same ? heats up fast and eats batteries ?
wtf , thats crap, what do i get now, dell ?!

savemejebus · 20-02-2004 03:25PM

It seems that all PC based laptops that use Pentium 4 chips will have a mediocre battery life so if you want a hight spec -non centrino machine then you'll have to get used to that fact.

There are non-dell options, LIDL usually do a laptop that is supposed to be great around this time of year, Toshiba laptops are well regarded, on the downside they are a little heavy, usually have 20gb less hard drive space than LIDL or ALDI, and don't usually have DVD Burners, just CD/DVD combo, a decent Toshiba will set you back around €1399 in PC World/Curries/Dixons at the mo - probably better off getting it from Dabs. I've seen some nice compaqs with AMD processors at around the €1400 mark and for a bit more you could go sony Vaio, the FR415 series looks nice (want one myself). Currys have a nice lookging packard bell with a DVD -R drove at the moment for around €1400 but i don't know what packard bell quality is like - have a monitor and have had no probs but have heard bad things about desktop machines

just so you know, i've heard that compaq laptops generate lots of heat as well

hope this helps

The_Conductor · 20-02-2004 09:03PM

The reason the Gericom laptops and their derivatives are a lot cheaper is principally because they use desktop processors- as opposed to mobile processors. This should not detract from the laptop in any manner other than battery life and heat generation (the latest P4 desktop gives out over 120 watts of heat when busy).

Looking at the specs of the laptop it is bloody good value though. Another positive is as a large manufacturer- upgrades/bios updates etc should be readily available in the future.

I should have followed that advice myself- my own laptop is a Gateway Solo- its impossible to get accessories that fit the chasis

Shane

Standard Toaster · 22-02-2004 07:00PM

Originally posted by smccarrick
I should have followed that advice myself- my own laptop is a Gateway Solo- its impossible to get accessories that fit the chasis

Shane

OT
Check out mundocorp.com and capdat.com for Solo parts.;)

The_Conductor · 22-02-2004 08:48PM

Cheers The_Edge- all I need now is to raise the loot!

Thks,

Shane

kaimera · 22-02-2004 08:54PM

Originally posted by smccarrick
The reason the Gericom laptops and their derivatives are a lot cheaper is principally because they use desktop processors- as opposed to mobile processors. This should not detract from the laptop in any manner other than battery life and heat generation (the latest P4 desktop gives out over 120 watts of heat when busy).

[offtopic]
my laptop is an Advent P4 2.6 and it pushes out at max over 70 degrees on the CPU and 50+ on the mobo under full load. :dunno:

The_Conductor · 22-02-2004 09:05PM

OT

I'd do my head in trying to calculate what that is in Watts.....

Seems fair enough though- 70 is reasonable (my desktop using the same processor is in the low 50's and my mobo sensors are in the mid 30's- but then heat dissipation in desktop chasis is a hell of a lot better).

Laptops are always nice hand warmers!

raphaelS · 24-02-2004 12:05AM

Originally posted by savemejebus
...Currys have a nice lookging packard bell with a DVD -R drove at the moment for around €1400 but i don't know what packard bell quality is like - ...

I was able to compare the sound out of a Toshiba, a Dell and a Packard Bell. You can listen to music with the first two... but with the Packard Bell, it is awfull! I thought it was a problem with the sound card drivers/settings but not this is just crappy speakers...
Once you plug-in a headphone, this is ok.

Just my 0.02 € about Packard Bell!

Raphael

Roshomon · 26-02-2004 12:57PM

So did anyone make it to Aldi this morning?

Standard Toaster · 26-02-2004 07:45PM

I went to the Coolock branch at about 1:00pm and ordered one.

Anyone else?

cubix · 27-02-2004 07:32AM

Did they ask for the cash/deposit up front The_Edge? as I am hoping not have to pay them until it arrives into the store to give me a chance to raise the mula
Cheers

Standard Toaster · 27-02-2004 10:03AM

I just wrote down my details...that's it. No cash/deposit needed. The sales assisant said I would get a phonecall as soon as the laptop was ready for collection. So maybe a week or so.

dontasciime · 27-02-2004 08:45PM

I bought one of these laptops ,and i am not happy with it .
For starters ,There is only a windows xp home recovery disc supplied ,yeah i got the product key but not the operating system .

It eats the battery .

The gfx card is supposed to be an 8x agp and directx 9 hardware ,(its not )
as the computer and nv driver reports it as geforce fx go5600 but only with agp 4x and directx 8.1 hardware ,But this might be down to the motherboard inside laptop no actually supporting the AGP 3.0 standard .

Btw i cant find out what motherboard is in this laptop ,to verify anything above ,as the system specs reported by windows ,does not show the manufacturer of motherboard .

I thought maybe the bios was set to 4x ,so checked out bios ,and thats crap as well ,looks like gericom have put in an oem bios to dstop idiots from changing something ,then when it wont boot ,try to rma laptop ,so they have basically put a useless bios in ,you cant alter anything ,apart from boot order.

The top right of the keyboard is a little lose as well .
They operate a 5 pixel rule as well .
Im sick ,spent a £1000 on this and it gets better ,the mhz of this machine is not 3064 its 2115 ,and according to how they have installed this machine its got 2 cpus ,i doubt it.
The gfx ,is an nvidia card ,but you cannot use the unified driver according to nvidia for the fx go range of gfx cards .Tell you to see manufacturer ,well gericom dont seem to have one ,yeah the driver disc will have a gfx drive on there ,but it will be old.
Another thing the support at gericom ,faq, solutions ,are only anygood of you can speak german,or rather read .

The manual would be a better help if it would list the chipset ,the motherboard manufacturer etc ,so that i could source all of the drivers i need for a fresh install of my windows xp PRO ,as i dont like home edition .
As the installation the idiots at gericom have done is ,shoddy and not what i would wish to have installed .
The norton av 2004 subs runs out in 26/05/04
They have installed AOHELL 8 and the internet (LOL@)" and the internet"
its a terrible install.
I think gericoms staff used to work for fisher price .

Its probably a fantastic laptop ,if i get round to installing a better operating system etc .And flash the bios with something to tinker with ,Like to see if the gfx is really 8x agp ,or the motherboard is capable of running 8 agp ,Nvidia spec on nv site say that the fx go 5600 is 8 x agp and directx 9 .
The fact that it was dx9 hardware card is what made me want that particular laptop,yeah and the price .
So im kinda stuck with it now .Its a nice looking laptop as well ,and the model name of it is confusing as well on gericoms site ,as windows reports it as being HUMMER .
Look at hummer on gericoms site and its closer to the hummer advance ,without it even being that one .
If someone else can give me some info on the motherboard etc ,will be decent machine ,once i install what i want .
Im hoping so anyways .

Baud · 28-02-2004 12:46PM

For starters ,There is only a windows xp home recovery disc supplied ,yeah i got the product key but not the operating system .

That's pretty standard now.. neither Acer nor Sony give the OS install CD, just a restore to factory install disc (or 2 or 3)

The gfx card is supposed to be an 8x agp and directx 9 hardware ,(its not )

Not sure how you can check that properly.. make sure directX 9.whatever is installed, put the latest drivers on, and run 3dmark2003 or some of the other dx9 benchmarks.

Im sick ,spent a £1000 on this and it gets better ,the mhz of this machine is not 3064 its 2115 ,and according to how they have installed this machine its got 2 cpus ,i doubt it.

Run cpuid to check that. It's advertised as a 3.06G P4M with HT, so 2 cpus is correct. Not sure why it's appearing a 2.1G though.

As far as the preinstalled software goes, sounds almost exactly like my dell and acer machines, with piles of rubbish installed. Uninstall them if you don't want them.

L.

dontasciime · 28-02-2004 02:29PM

The mhz was checked with CPUID ,it reported 2115mhz

In windows device manager there are 2 instances of intel cpu @3.06 ghz

Nvidia settings ,says 4x agp ,i have ran dxdiag ,and yes directx 9.0a is installed ,but that dont mean diddly ,as i have got dx9 in this machine with a ti 4200 8x agp ,this card in here is still directx 8.1 Hardware though ,and runs 9 in software (emu)

Nvidia specs for go fx 5600 ,say 8x agp dx9 hardware ,but like i said windows and aida32 ,report ,4 x agp AGP 2.0 ,the bios is terrible ,you cant alter anything ,so i was gonna check to see if i could alter the agp speed ,and another thing the graphics aperture size on the 128 ,eg card has been set to 256 ,also side band add is (capable on this card but has been disabled )as is the card capable of fast writes and this has been disabled ,The bios doesnt have these settings either and i want to lower the graphics aperture size .

I still need to know the MB manufacturer ,as i want to flash the bios ,with a bios with some more features .

I have never owned an Intel chipset ,CPU ,i dont really like em ,as they are economical with the truth about their CPUs speed ,etc.
ooh and did i say i eats the battery.

so you can verify that there is 2 cpus in here ,as normally in bios it would say dual cpu ,and it doesnt it says mobile pent 4 @3.06

I have never owned a laptop before ,ive got 8 desktop pc,s that i built myself all with AMD processors ,SO i aint an novice ,gonna have another look at the docs for intel cpus ,as gericoms site aint much help ,for tech details on kit they use in laptops the sell.

Might take it back to ALDI and swap it for 9,000 bannanas.

Placebo · 28-02-2004 10:15PM

Might take it back to ALDI and swap it for 9,000 bannanas.

lol.
well i stayed away from the offer,
got an Advent

AMD 64 bit 3000
512 ram
40 gb
ati radeon 9600 (direct x 9) i think, so websites say.
cdrw + dvd
good enough.
1700,. got it for 1530, 10% off friend.

Cal · 28-02-2004 11:39PM

Run CPUID after booting on mains power and not off battery. Mobile processors can throttle back when booted on battery.

Cal

ozmo · 29-02-2004 04:21AM

Originally posted by Cal67
Run CPUID after booting on mains power and not off battery. Mobile processors can throttle back when booted on battery.

Cal

Yeah - I bought Lidls laptop few months ago.
Very disappointed with speeds - until I discovered it runs at half speed when on batteries (wasnt documented anywhere and its not configurable). Pluged it in and its very fast...

Whats the screen like with the Aldi.
According to an earlier posting to this thread - it is capable of 1400x1000 pixels - but I suspect thats with an external monitor.
I found the Lidl screen to be a bit washed out for colour compared to a older Sony Vaio it was bought to replace - but otherwise a fine laptop.

dontasciime · 29-02-2004 11:32AM

Nope you dont need an external monitor to get top resolution 1400 X 1050
The screen quality is very good ,and i am not a fan of TFT (at all) i really hate em .
But not much use having the laptop and carrying my iiyama 19 " monitor around with me .
I have now installed windows xp(PRO) into it ,but ,i have checked chipset ,etc ,and getting the chipset drivers from intels site ,is taking some time ,Its just so confusing ,the documentation on their site is contradictory ,just when you think you have found the drivers you need ,you have to recheck and then your still no further forward, Im going to have another look today ,the chipset is as far as i can tell 82845G/GL/PE/GV
82801DB/DBM ,but then to confuse the matter even more when you check the driver cd supplied with laptop ,and you read the info in setup etc ,it tells you this

Product: Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility
* Release: Production Validation
* Version: 4.20.1009
* Target Chipset#: Intel(R) 82855PM Chipset
* Date: November 22, 2002

This is why i hate Intel .the cant even get a readme right.

Suppose till i get used to it ,will have to have a good look for drivers , I have just ghosted a clean installation ,so if i do put the wrong driver in ,Its really fast to put xp back in ,As it shifts the data in ,i know its only ata 100 and 4200 rpm ,but data burst ,is extremly good on this hard drive ,motherboard combo .1.67 gig only takes 1minute 58 secs to transfer (ie in create image mode) so i should imagine it will load a little bit quicker .

I just checked out the usb Fdd price ,70 quid ,should have gone to EGG .
If anyone else has bought one of these and can explain the chipset to me ,then that would be excellent .
thanks

cubix · 01-03-2004 03:02AM

Hoping to pick one up on the docket system myself,by the sounds of it Dontasciime you have nearly cracked the nut.With any luck with a little bit more input we might actually get to find out what is in this box

sceptre · 01-03-2004 04:18AM

Originally posted by dontasciime
so you can verify that there is 2 cpus in here ,as normally in bios it would say dual cpu ,and it doesnt it says mobile pent 4 @3.06

I realise you're not a novice but do yourself a favour and google for "hyperthreading". It's hardly a new topic, although it's only arrived in desktop hardware in recent times, implemented in Intel hardware under the Jackson project.

It isn't two physical CPUs - it's one. Hyperthreading, or Simultaneous Multithreading (if you're more familiar with AMD hardware, it's the same as HyperTransport with which you're presumably familiar), enables multi-threaded software applications to execute tasks in parallel. A hyperthreaded CPU is basically a single CPU with two Architectural State engines (from a design point of view it's the only significant physical difference). Open Task manager and you'll see graphics for two CPUs.

I wouldn't say that Intel are economical with the truth about their CPU's speeds in terms of megahertz. What they're guilty of is overstating the impact that raw megahertz has on application speed and understating the impact that CPU architecture (particularly internal bus lengths) has - where they've been losing the battle (which is partly why they've implemented HT tech in the first place, not that that actually solves the problem in any way)

dontasciime · 01-03-2004 12:51PM

Yes you are right maybe i should have done a search on google.But then again you would think that the manual for the laptop would maybe explain it ,and then you would not have felt the need to point this out to me ,but then you would not have been able to post a reply .
As for hyper threading technology ,its represented as a logical cpu .in benchmarks ,and basically allows two threads per cycle .Benefiting in an increase of speed by approx 3 seconds .
I have now fully installed xp pro ,The cd that comes with laptop has the drivers on and went in ok .I tried to get a driver for gfx card from nvidia but they do not support their geforce fx go 5600 GPU ,As i found out by trying to install nvidia's Unified driver that really is not that unified ,as i doesnt work .I will have another look on Gericoms ftp site ,but i spent a while looking there ,and when you can't even recognise your own laptop, you know your in for a bit of a safari hunt .

The clock speed of this cpu when on AC is 3064.5 mhz (adaptive)
when running on batteries (it will be adaptive)

This laptop is growing on me ,as i get familiar with it.
I am still waiting for gericom to get back to me to tell me the model name of this laptop ,dxdiag reports it as Hummer ,but the hummer specs are totally different on gericoms site .(hummer advance is closer )
(nvidia have now changed their brief for this 5600 card ,no longer is it listed as being dx 9 hardware ,or 8x agp ) i am also still waiting for nvidia to get back to me about this .As well as why there is no driver download for this GPU on their site .

Anyone who gets this laptop will have their combo dvdrw/cdrw drive listed as being

and E: as a result of how they have installed Pinnacles Instant Copy ,One being listed as a SCSI device .When you install operating system again ,you can rectify this .Not that it caused any problems ,i just dont like it being set up like that ,i dont like virtual cd roms of anysort .

Another thing if you like using Nero as your burning software ,i would pressume any version of 6 will be ok .
i wanted to use nero 5 ,however unless you use nero551054.exe (the latest update to 5 ) as previous version of 5 will not recognise your dvdrw/cdrw drive .And you will only get the option of image recorder.

The bios is still rubbish .I still want to change this but need to find a bios file appropriate to his laptop motherboard .They give you the flash update program on cd utility/driver disc .

Overall i am pleased with the end result after i did the (install)

bambam · 01-03-2004 01:06PM

wouldn't worry about the manufacturer providing nvidia drivers too much. There are a sites out there that provided modified .inf files to allow you to run the latest nvidia drivers with your mobile gpu. They also generally have a forum or info on how well the modified drivers perform. try http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=10
for a start, or just google for other sites. I regularly used modified drivers for my "geforce 440 go" on my Inspiron 8200 with no probs

As for your battery problems - is the cpu a normal desktop P4-HT or a P4-M. I suspect its a normal desktop version, plenty of manufactures use them as they're way cheaper than mobile versions. This of course means that you've got a "desktop replacement" laptop rather than a "ultra mobile" version (to use sales speak)

Still an ok laptop for the price - just not one that is going to live on the road.

RicardoSmith · 01-03-2004 01:13PM

99% of people who buy a laptop will never need to go near the bios. But the poor documentation, older drivers and minimal bios functionality is pretty much the norm on all mass produced PC's. I would have expected a budget laptop have the same problems.

No offence dontasciime but you seem poorly informed as to what you were are buying. But I'm curious as to what you expect to achieve by tweaking the Go Fx 5600? I have one in my own laptop (a Sony) and it works fine for less demanding 3D games and apps. What sort of an improvement do you think you'll see.

RicardoSmith · 01-03-2004 01:37PM

Originally posted by bambam
......I regularly used modified drivers for my "geforce 440 go" on my Inspiron 8200 with no probs.....

What sort of an improvement do you see?

ALDI Laptops

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